


Tear Me Down (Start Again)

by GideonGraystairs



Category: Infernal Devices Series - Cassandra Clare, Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Angst, Childhood Friends, Denial of Feelings, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Hurt Everyone, Hurt Jem, Hurt Will, Hurt galore, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Major Illness, Minor Character Death, Pining, Romance, Self-Hatred, Slow Build, Slow Burn, because it's awful, canon minor character death, heronstairs
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-22
Updated: 2017-05-22
Packaged: 2018-02-18 08:20:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2341493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GideonGraystairs/pseuds/GideonGraystairs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Will's been best friends with Jem since the sixth grade, always able to rely on him as a constant pillar of support. But when he realizes his feelings for the other go beyond friendship, his entire world shifts. Struggling with the obstacles thrown at him by high school and the people around them, Will drags them both down a dark road they may never be able to find their way off.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Begin Now

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry that I haven't been updating AWF here, I'll get on that tonight. But here's a new story based on [this prompt](http://gideongraystairs.tumblr.com/post/96477715531/can-you-please-write-some-heronstairs-angst-maybe-they) over on my tumblr, where you can still send them in. Also, sorry it's horrifically short, but it's basically just the introduction.

* * *

 . _Begin Now_

* * *

 

When Will’s school closes to make room for the new community center being constructed in their area, he groans and gripes about it to his mother for a good four hours before she bops him over the head and smothers him in his blankets, telling him he really doesn’t have a say in it so it’d be best if he just accepted it now and saved himself a whole load of pain.  Will stubbornly refuses, thinking that maybe, just maybe, if he hates the idea enough it won’t be true.  Though, admittedly, he knows that’s never going to happen.

He’s angry, of course he is, and frustrated with the world because he’s going to have to start all over at a new school now, isn’t he?  His friends won’t be going to the same school as him, all heading off over the river to St.Mark’s. He hates that he lives in a different area than them, hates that he knows he’ll never talk to them again now, and most of all he really just hates that this is happening to begin with.

His mother tsks at him, shushing him with a finger to his lips and a kiss to his forehead before she swoops out of his room, flicking the light off as she goes.  Glaring after her in annoyed silence, Will decides there can’t be anything worse than this.

When he’s older, looking back on his eleven year old self and laughing silently through tears that burn like acid on his cheeks, he’ll wonder what he was thinking.  Because really, it can get so much worse.

 

* * *

The girl who parks herself in front of him in the middle of lunch on Will’s first day at the dreaded new school is fairly pretty for someone her age, with long tousles of brown hair and stormy grey eyes that remind him of the rainclouds hanging overhead, promising the worst weather they’ve had all year.  Her smile is warm and kind, almost secretive as she glances back behind her to the boy she’d left sitting at her own table to come to Will’s.  Admittedly, the silver-haired guy is much prettier than her, with bright eyes that shine like the moon on the pond in Will’s backyard and skin as fair as the ivory wolf sitting on his mother’s dresser.  He doesn’t ponder over it for long though, turning his attention back to the girl in front of him instead.

“Did you want something?” he asks, fully aware that he’s most likely coming off as rude.  He’s still bitter about having had to leave his old school and come to this wretched place, he’s pretty sure he has every right to be rude.  No matter if his mother’s told him otherwise a thousand times before.

“I’m Tessa,” says the girl before gesturing behind her to where the silver boy is smiling politely over at them. “That’s Jem.”

“Will,” he offers reluctantly, folding his arms on the table he’s hunched over and glaring down at them in childish anger.

“We thought you might want to come eat with us.” Tessa frowns, eyes raking over his posture more than once before she continues. “You looked lonely.”

“I’m fine,” Will grumbles, looking away to avoid her gentle gaze.  She seems nice, the kind of person he knows would make a great friend, but he’s still bitter and angry and frustrated and refusing to accept that he’s really here to stay.  It doesn’t matter if his older sister’s already scolded him twice for being such a brat; his mother always says he’s too stubborn for his own good.

“Are you sure?” Tessa asks, giving him a meaningful look.  He shrugs, picking at the plastic table he’s sitting at.  She heaves a sigh and then turns to give the boy across the cafeteria a hand gesture that Will takes to mean ‘well, I tried’. And then, she’s gone, back across the room to the table she’d come from, leaving Will to wallow in his misery alone.  He feels even more bitter at that thought.

He frowns down at his lunch for a long minute, playing back his mother’s words of attempted comfort in his mind a thousand times.  She’d told him it wouldn’t be that different, that there was really no harm done, that she was sure he’d make new friends soon and everything would be great.  Like it’s really just that easy.

Will gives the girl’s table a meaningful look before he shoves himself to his feet and heads over, tossing his lunch down and sinking into the chair across from Jem, Tessa to his right.  There’s another girl there too now, seated across from Tessa, with bouncy curls of blond hair and sharp brown eyes.  She gives him a cold glare as he takes his seat, huffing as she stands up abruptly and leaves, not even saying a word.  Will frowns after her in confusion.

“Sorry,” says the silver-haired boy across from him with an apologetic smile. “Jessie’s just like that.”

“Is she your friend?” Will asks, wondering just what kind of people these two associate with.  After all, if he’s going to be their friend then he’ll inevitably be integrated into whatever their little group is.  He’d like to have an idea of what he’s getting himself into.

“Foster sister,” Jem supplies, reaching across the table to swipe an apple slice out of Tessa’s lunch.  Will tries not to be too shocked or curious, but it’s hard being that he’s never really met anyone in a familial situation that’s been all that different from his.  He glances over at Tessa who’s nodding acknowledgingly, breaking another apple slice in half before plopping it into her mouth.

“Oh,” he replies lamely, fiddling with the zipper on his lunch bag.

The other boy smiles at him, reaching across the table again to offer him his hand.  Something about him eases Will, swipes away at the bitterness he’s been feeling with a gentle touch, leaving him oddly calm and… warm.“I’m Jem, by the way.”

“I know, Tessa told me,” he says in response, shaking the proffered hand. “I’m Will.”

Jem’s grin stretches just a tiny bit wider, looking almost cheeky as he replies, “I know, Tessa told me,” imitating Will’s previous statement.  He laughs, suddenly feeling less awkward amongst these new people.  Beside him, Tessa shakes her head with a smile, as if she can’t quite understand them but has learned by now to just go with the flow.  Jem laughs at her, a bright, airy sound, and Will grins at the both of them with a sudden overwhelming feeling of excitement.

Maybe this won’t be so bad after all.


	2. Move Along

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been feeling incredibly inspired with this story, so I'm going to run with it while it lasts.

* * *

 . _Move Along_

* * *

 

Seventh grade, Will decides, couldn’t possibly be more exciting than sixth.  He’s already got his friends this time, and while yes, it is a new school again, he isn’t switching part way through the year like he’d had to last time.  He’s already established that Jessamine is by no means his friend but that he should remain as civil as possible with her when in the presence of her foster brother, due to Jem’s extreme dislike of any conflict whatsoever.  He’s got it all figured out, there’s really nothing left to be all that excited about.

Tessa doesn’t seem to think so, though, practically bouncing out of her skin as they near the wide double doors at the entrance to the school.  She keeps looking back at him and Jem, a wide grin spread across her bright face before she whips around again, brown hair flying over her shoulder as she goes.  Beside him, Jem shakes his head with a soft laugh that sends something just a little bit warm throughout Will’s body and follows after her slowly, sliding his hand over the railing as they mount the stairs.  If Will finds that a small bit strange, that his friend seems to be using the railing for more support than he should need, he doesn’t give it much thought.

“Well, she’s excited,” he notes to his friend, watching as Tessa, a good two hundred meters ahead of them now, swings the doors open and races inside like a cheetah on the run.  Will almost laughs out loud at the sight, but resolves to merely smile and roll his eyes at her.

“Of course she is, Nate’s here,” Jem replies, nodding his head to the older boy currently swooping the grey-eyed girl up in a tight hug.  They look alike, the two of them, both with a wavy mass of wild brown hair and stormy eyes that still remind Will of the rainclouds that were present the first time he’d met his now best friends.  “You know how much she loves him,” Jem adds after another beat of comfortable silence.

Will shakes his head at them.  “Cecy didn’t do that to me last year when we were going to the same school.”

“That’s because she hates you,” Jem teases, bumping shoulders with him as they reach the doors.  It’s an easy joke that always makes an appearance one way or another; some member of Will’s family despising him.  Of course, they both now that’s far from the case being that his family takes every opportunity to dote on him in any way they can.  Somehow, both Tessa and Jem have found a small amount of humour in how much they seem to fret over him at any given moment.  Cecy, Will’s younger sister by two years, is the only one of them who absolutely refuses to do so, much to his odd pleasure.  At least someone in his family’s normal.

“She does not!  Everybody loves me.”  He throws in a wink at the end for good measure, taking satisfaction in the quirk of Jem’s eyebrow that comes as a response.  He’d missed this over the summer, more than he’d ever really noticed.  He wonders briefly over the fact that Jem couldn’t hang out even just once, while Tessa had been over nearly every day and refused to say a word about him.  It’s strange, he knows, but Jem’s always been a little odd.  They all have; it’s what’s made them such good friends.

“Will, Will! Come meet my brother!” Tessa calls from down the hall where she stands glued to the older boy’s side, her hands waving excitedly through the air as she beckons him over.  Shooting Jem a reproachful look, he heads off to his own private torture for the day.

Seventh grade, Will decides, definitely won’t be as good as sixth.

 

* * *

 

Tessa sinks into the chair beside her best friend with a groan, slamming her head into her folded arms on top of the desk.  The bell sounds in the background, an irritating ringing that couldn’t end soon enough signaling the start of their last class of the day.  Giving the girl next to him a concerned look full of things he doesn’t need to say, Jem carefully slides his binder into the desk he’s sitting at and turns in his chair to face her.  She, on the other hand, doesn’t move an inch, not even when he taps at her shoulder to get her attention.

“Tessa?” he says gently, rubbing at her back to try to provide some sort of comfort.  Jem’s always been good at this, has never had any trouble calming Jessie down in the middle of a tantrum, but somehow this feels different.  Maybe it’s the dread unfurling it’s razor sharp claws in his stomach or the uncertainty grasping at his heart with an iron fist. “What’s happened?” he asks, though something in him tells him he already knows.

“Will’s an idiot,” she grumbles into her arms before throwing herself back in her chair to turn pained eyes to the patterned ceiling of the classroom.  And he knows, he does, but he can’t bring himself to accept it, despite the fact that everything in him tells him he’s going to have to eventually.

“You’re just realizing this now?” Jem asks with feigned disbelief, an attempt to lighten the mood and perhaps just slightly shift the topic over to something that doesn’t make his head feel like it’s going to explode.  She smiles over at him softly, an expression that dies before reaching her eyes, and then heaves a great sigh like the world’s just found it’s way onto her shoulders and she can’t bear it no matter how hard she tries.

“Is he really that blind?” Tessa whispers softly, just as the teacher shuffles into the room with a thick binder full of lesson plans clutched tightly against his side.  Jem’s eyes widen in surprise at her words, his hand stopping it’s soothing motion on the small of her back, because he really is going to have to just accept it.

“Blind to…” He hesitates, feeling like the world on her shoulders is the one that’s starting to fall out from underneath him. “Your feelings for him?”

Tessa makes a frustrated noise in the back of her throat.  “Of course, you idiot. What else?”

Jem frowns but doesn’t reply, turning to focus on the messy scrawl of their English teacher swirling across the blackboard instead.  It’s only when he goes to copy down the note that he realizes his hands are shaking and there’s a heavy feeling in his chest that makes his breath come in shallow gasps.

And, yes, maybe he does know what it is.  Maybe he is fully aware that he’s developing a ridiculous crush on one of his best friends.  Maybe he’s conscious of the fact that this is a horrible thing, that it will bring him nothing but more trouble than he already has, that he’s an awful person for this, that he’s going to ruin everything if he doesn’t stop it right now.  Maybe he knows exactly what’s happening and that really, there’s no stopping it apart from simply waiting for it to pass, like any phase should.  Maybe he knows it never will.

That doesn’t mean he has to acknowledge it.

 

* * *

 

They’re sitting at lunch one day in the middle of October— him, Jem, Tessa, Sophie and the Lightwood boys —when Will notices both his best friends watching him carefully from across the table.  There’s something frustrated in Tessa’s eyes, something flickering just short of anger and full of desperation for a thing that he can’t even begin to comprehend, and it makes him frown in confusion and concern.  

It’s when he looks over at Jem, though, that he feels something scratch the filed tip of a sharp nail over his heart ever so softly.  Because there, deep in silver eyes like the moonlight that spills through Will’s open window in the dead of night, there is something so very sad that it almost makes him flinch back, away from the shadows flickering there like beasts in steel barred cages.  There’s something else too, stashed away even deeper, something that will claw at him restlessly for the rest of the day with an itch of wary familiarity, but it’s buried too far down for Will to decipher its meaning and he’ll forget it by the time morning comes, even though he knows somewhere in him that he shouldn’t.  That he should hold onto this with everything in him.

Frown deepening, he turns back to the conversation at hand; an animated discussion on the horrors of math tests such as the one Gabriel’s going to be writing right after lunch for Mrs. Wilson; a punishment for having missed the last assignment’s deadline.  Will snickers at him relentlessly, sticking out his tongue like the child he shouldn’t be and teasing him for his misfortune.  Of course, he doesn’t mention that he’ll be writing a math test the next day as well.  It’s not like it really matters, when it comes down to it.

From over on Will’s right, Sophie comments tonelessly about how competitive boys are, her dark hazel eyes trained all the while on a point just shy of the Lightwood boy beside her, far enough away that she isn’t staring directly at Gideon but close enough that she can obviously still see him out of the corner of her eye.  Gideon, on the other hand, isn’t so subtle.  His gaze stays unmoving on the side of the young girl’s face, the one with the scar marring part of it’s beauty, though Gideon doesn’t even seem to register that it’s there.  

Rolling his eyes at their dancing around each other, Will shoots a glance back over at the other side of the table to try to catch Jem’s eye and make a silent remark on their friends’ utter ridiculousness.  When his gaze falls on the other boy, though, and he quirks an eyebrow with a playful smirk twisting his lips, Jem doesn’t laugh or shake his head or roll his eyes like he’s supposed to do, like he _always_ does.  Instead, he stares blankly back at Will for a moment before pursing his lips and turning away.

And yeah, Will’s lying if he says that doesn’t hit him like a ton of bricks to the gut because Jem is his _best friend_ and what on earth is going on?  What the hell has he done to end up on the receiving end of this odd behaviour?  Or, maybe, what hasn’t he done?  What’s going on?

Something in him tells him that he won’t be getting an answer for a very, _very_ , long time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What'd you think?


	3. To Love, To Lose, To Know

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You see, I can write full length chapters! Now that most of the intro stuff is out of the way and they've gotten older, the chapters should revert to my usual length.

* * *

   _. To Love, To Lose, To Know_  

* * *

When Ella gets sick, it doesn’t take long for it to stop her heart cold behind her already far too pale skin and disintegrating muscle.  No one’s really surprised when it finally happens after nearly half a year has passed, the doctors have been telling them for months by now that she wouldn’t last long after she was diagnosed.  It doesn’t stop the grief that follows in the wake of her sudden death, though, or the black shadow that descends on the Herondale household before it comes.  It doesn’t stop the crushing reality of the world from forcing them all to the hard, cold ground of the bitter truth.

Will, full of thirteen years-worth of apparently wasted love being that the person on the receiving end of it is now gone, doesn’t take it the same way the rest of his family does.  Where they cling to each other like glue, wrapping themselves closer together to fend off the icy wind that’s swept over them since they buried their eldest child six feet under, Will pulls away from them as though they bear a plague he doesn’t want to fall victim to himself.  He locks his door and draws the curtains over his window before curling up in the middle of his floor under a mountain of blankets so thick he can hardly breathe.  And if a part of him wishes he couldn’t breathe at all, well, no one ever has to know.

He isn’t sure how long passes like that, only ever coming out of his pile of desperate comfort to fetch water, food and another book once he’s finished the last epic fantasy to escape his bitter reality.  He doesn’t sleep a full night through even once, just has little fits of less than consciousness here and there from which he always emerges feeling even worse than before, even more trapped and lost and empty and confused.  He’s only thirteen; he doesn’t know how to deal with this grief.

There’s knocks on his door and soft please to come out, gentle thumps of plates piled far too high with food being left outside his bedroom in a discreet attempt to draw him out.  There’s footsteps pausing close by before fading off down the hallway on the other side of his safe haven.  There’s silence, and muffled sobs through his walls that he can’t bring himself to place with any one member of his family and there is so, so much despair in the very air he’s breathing that it nearly chokes him every time he inhales.

Cecily, Will decides, is the worst of all of them.  She spends the first day sobbing in her room, the one beside Will’s, and the second screaming at everything in sight with loud piercing wails that even Will’s fortress of blankets and thick walls can’t shut out.  The third day, she is eerily silent.

He can’t be sure how many more follow after that, how much school he misses in the process or how many times the phone rings unanswered through the suddenly empty seeming house.  He wonders if Jem and Tessa know what’s happened, if they’re worried about him.  He hopes they are, knows Tessa is for sure, feels a pang in what’s left of his heart when he has to question if Jem might be.  It’s been strange between them lately, Will’s noticed, ever since Ella got sick.  Will’s closest friend in the whole world hadn’t even bothered to pay them a single visit in the hospital during all those longs months and had refused to be a part of any conversation around it no matter how desperately he sought out his well-worded and careful advice.  And it hurts, it does, because Jem is his best friend, his other half. He’s supposed to _be there_.

As if on cue, it’s just when Will’s thoughts start to hone in on this single dash of uncertainty and pained worry, flickers of anger and confusion and even more loss echoing through his heavy heart, that a soft knock sounds from his door again, the first one in days now.  Will doesn’t say anything, doesn’t move from his secured position in his fortress of covers.  He doesn’t want to talk to them, doesn’t want to have to deal with the rest of his family’s grief on top of his own. He just can’t.

But it’s not a Herondale’s voice that slides in through the cracks around the door, not a Herondale’s voice that flows its way to him on a breathy current of comfort and concern.  No, it’s the voice he hadn’t even realized was the only one he really wanted to hear.

“Will?  Will, please let me in.”  There’s a pause, pungent in the air between them as Will stares at the door, his heart pounding dully in his chest. “I should have been here sooner.  I’m sorry.  I… I’m here now. Open the door, Will, please.  Just open the door.” Another pause, just as heavy as the last, broken only by the harsh sounds of Jem’s ragged breaths from behind the painted wood standing in between the two of them.  It feels like more than just a door into Will’s room now, though.  It feels like a door into his heart, his whole world.

“Why?” is all he says in response, his voice sounding empty and exhausted even to his own ears.  He feels dead on his feet as he pushes himself up, still staring wistlessly at where he knows Jem stands not ten feet away. Nine now, based on the shuffling that occurs as Jem steps closer to the door.

“Because you need me,” Jem replies simply, a gentle tone that sends a wave of comfort through Will clearly present in his voice.  It’s hard then, getting his arm to lift and his finger to flick open the lock.  It’s hard to let it drop, to take a step back and revert the distance between them to ten again.

Nine, as Jem opens the door and slips inside, turning back towards it as he pushes it closed with a soft click.  He doesn’t move for a long minute, his faintly laboured breaths the only sound in the room even as Will tries to ignores it with everything in him.  And then suddenly he turns and he’s looking at Will with those sad silver eyes and frowning and giving him this look and _how did he ever think he could be okay alone?_

Eight, when Will starts an aborted journey towards the other boy, his hands twitching at his sides with the forced back urge to reach for Jem, to grab him and hold onto him and never let go like he’d had to do Ella.  Jem takes a sharp inhale, eyes wary as they watch him, and he knows his friend is trying to figure out what he’s supposed to do right now.  That’s terrifying in it’s own right, because Jem has always, _always_ , known what to do before Will has even had to ask.

Seven with Jem’s graceful shift closer to him, a nearly ghostly movement that sends a harsh sliver of light across his pale face, the result of the curtains being just a little too short to cover Will’s whole window.  At least he knows for sure it’s daytime now, he hasn’t looked out the window in weeks to check.

Six and Will reaches for him, a slow movement that he’s not so sure will ever end.

Five as Jem lifts a hand in Will’s direction as well.

Four with his stride forward.

Three with Will’s.

Two when Jem shifts.

One when Will does.

None when they collide together, Will’s hands clinging and pulling and twisting at Jem’s button down shirt as he buries his face into his best friend’s shoulder like he wants nothing more than to melt into it, all the unshed tears from the last few days leaving him and going to Jem when the other boy curls his own arms around Will, gentle hands rubbing at his back and ruffling at his hair in a desperate attempt to comfort him.  And, somehow, it works.

Eventually, they end up curled together in Will’s bed, the mountain of blankets from the floor now splayed out over the two of them as they breathe, so close their air seems to mingle and mix between them when they exhale in staggered rhythms.  Will’s eyes are closed, tear crusted lashes resting heavily on his skin as he fights off the sleep he hasn’t had in days.  Like this, he can’t see Jem, but he can somehow still sense him, even without the hot puffs of air against his face or the warm press of fragile limbs against his own.  He feels safe now, better, like the weight that’d been holding him down far below the ground is just starting to ebb away a bit.  He should have gone to Jem earlier, should have called him and gotten him to come.  He should have, he really should have.  He didn’t.

“Jem?” Will whispers uncertainly into the shadows falling all around them, casting a dark light over the argentous boy’s unnatural pallor.  He’s not sure where he’s going from here, in more ways than just with his words, but he feels like there’s something here with them, heavy in the space between them, that needs to be said.

“Yeah?” comes the quiet reply after a break of silence so long he’d almost started to think the other boy had succombed to both of their exhaustions already.  Will can’t find the voice to say anything in return, can’t grasp this feeling that he has something on his chest he needs to tell Jem enough to find the words to do so.  He knows that it’s something important he needs to say, something heavy and harsh clawing away at his barren soul, but it’s cloudy and unknown to him like nothing ever really has been and it slips away every time he reaches for it.

He hesitates. “Nevermind,” he tries. “I just want to sleep.”

“Do you want me to—”

“Stay,” Will says quickly, twisting his fingers into the back of Jem’s shirt even more tightly as though he’ll lose him if he lets go even for a fragment of a second.  He wonders if it’ll always be like this from now on, if he’ll always be terrified of losing people after Ella.  He has a feeling he will be.

Jem shifts against him, a movement that sucks the breath away from Will in a sharp slap of fear across his heart, but the silver boy only curls tighter into him.  “Okay,” he whispers softly, letting silver lashes fall across his cheeks and brilliant eyes like the moon spilling into the room through Will’s foggy window slip shut.

There’s a long moment where nothing breaks the silence of nightfall other than their steady breathing and the quiet splashing of faraway birds on the pond in Will’s backyard.  He doesn’t sleep, though he suspects Jem’s already slipped off into a dreamless slumber, but spends long minutes that feel endless staring at the shadowed wall just over Jem’s shoulder.  He wraps his arms tighter around his best friend, taking comfort in the hot puffs of air falling over his face in a steady rhythm that soothes him unlike anything he’d tried on his own during his time spent stowed away in his room grieving for a loss he couldn’t even begin to fathom.  Now, staring at Jem’s fluttering eyes and flushed cheekbones bright with vibrant life, Will prays with everything in him that this will last forever because he can’t imagine a life without Jem in it.  He doesn’t even want to try.

“Don’t tell Tessa,” he breathes quietly after another minute of staring, fully aware the other boy won’t hear him in his silent slumber.  There’s a part of him that takes small fragments of comfort in knowing it’s been said, even if it’s falling on deaf ears shut away from the world as of this moment.

A beat passes, Will closes his eyes again and feels his breathing slow, his heart thudding faintly in his chest, letting his mind wander to drowsy thoughts of the vast unknown stretching away inside of him.  He feels himself slipping away from consciousness, the world falling from his grip as a hazy cloud of new dreams slides over his mind and shuts it away in a cocoon of darkness and warmth.  He almost misses Jem’s soft murmur of “I won’t.”.  A smile plays at the corners of his mouth before he slips off completely into the land of much needed sleep, silver dreams of comfort swirling around him as he goes.

He does miss the second whisper that comes, though, a hushed breath of “I’m sorry, Will.  I don’t know what to do.”.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you thought.


	4. All I Want

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had every intention of updating earlier this week but there were some deaths within my community on Sunday so it's been kind of an awful couple of days. Anyway, here it is.

* * *

  _.All I Want_

* * *

  

Jem misses a lot of school in their ninth year, the first they spend at the high school across the river with the kids Will used to be friends with back before everything changed.  No one mentions it really, despite Will’s attempts to delve into the issue further; in fact, they don’t seem to consider it an issue at all.  Tessa just shrugs and gives him a pointed look he can’t read everytime he asks, and Jem certainly isn’t volunteering any information himself, despite the number of times Will confronts him about it.  But he’s not an idiot; he knows there’s a secret here that’s being kept from him.  And he’d be lying if he said he doesn’t want to know what it is more than nearly anything in the world.

He tries not to focus on it, telling himself that if Jem doesn’t want him to know then he must have a reason because Jem is the most open and trusting of the three of them and so rarely keeps things from them when they’re serious.  He reminds himself that it isn’t his business, not really, and that he should just let it go already, for the sake of their friendship.

So he does, or at least he manages to convince himself he has.  Instead, he focuses on his classes and his clubs, throwing himself into new friendships and every distraction he can find because he’s realized by now that he thinks about his best friend far too much to pass as normal.  He knows why, of course he does, and he finds it hard to ignore the thudding of his heart every time he sees a head of silver hair, but there’s a part of him that refuses to acknowledge the terrifying truth of his own feelings.  So distraction, Will decides, is really the best thing for him.

Somewhere along the way he meets Magnus, a glittery junior who looks at him with eyes that see too much and echoe painfully with too much sympathy and this strange understanding that Will tries not to read into as much as he should.  With Magnus comes the other three Lightwoods, Gideon and Gabriel’s distant cousins twice removed or something Will pays no attention to, too busy eyeing the way the dark-haired boy watches Magnus with a look that makes him ache because he _knows_ it. It’s the look he sees in the mirror everyday when thoughts of Jem cross his mind unwillingly.

There’s more that follow after the four of them, a red-haired girl and brown-eyed boy Will shares a history class with along with a few more seniors from the popular crowd.  They’re not really close friends, not much more than casual acquaintances who say hi when they pass each other in the halls, but it’s nice to be able to go out after school with different crowds and still know someone there.  It’s nice to have more than just Jem and Tessa and the small group he was dragged into when he first met the two of them.

He ends up getting close to Magnus, closer than he does to any of the others the outgoing boy brings with him, and he feels like there’s a weight off his chest sometimes now because he’s not alone; he’s seen the way the colourful teen looks at his own best friend, a quiet boy with stunning blue eyes much like Will’s own.  And he takes comfort in it, in the knowledge that he’s not the only one struggling with this, that maybe he isn’t such a horrible person for it after all.

Jem doesn’t really integrate into this new crowd of Will’s all that much.  He makes polite conversation with them when Will drags them all to sit together at lunch because he doesn’t want to choose between them, but for the most part he lets them just be Will’s friends and doesn’t tag along when they decide to hang out at the little diner just down the road from the neighbourhood most of them live in.  Will’s grateful for it, for being left with this one thing that hasn’t been tainted by his feelings for his best friend.

It isn’t until halfway through the school year that Will notices the way Jem and Alec seem to get along almost better than he and Magnus.  Maybe it’s because they’re both the kind of boys who are content to sit back and let the conversation flow around them, or because Jem never spends much time with Will’s new friend group as a whole, but somehow it escapes his notice and rams into him like a sledgehammer just after Christmas break when he sees them hanging out in the hallway together.

He’s not sure where the blow comes from, if it’s the way Jem is laughing or the easy manner in which they talk, the comfort in how they stand leaning against the lockers or how their shoulders brush together and their eyes crinkle with smiles Will isn’t used to seeing on either of them, but it comes and it hurts and he feels like he can’t breathe no matter how much air he sucks in through clenched teeth.

And he knows, he _knows_ , that it’s not like that between them, that they’re nothing more than close friends, but he can’t shake the idea once it plants itself in his head.  He hates himself for it, for being the jealous, possessive type he’s always found so unattractive, but there’s really nothing he can do to stop it once it comes.

He talks to Magnus one night halfway through the second semester, when they’re both lying on blown up mattresses in Will’s living room and a quiet lull in their easy banter fills the dark around them.  He’s clumsy at first, stumbling over words he doesn’t know how to use and pausing far too often to find the ones he needs.  Magnus understands from the moment he opens his mouth, though, and Will has never been more grateful to anyone but Jem that night after Ella died in his whole entire life.

“It sucks,” Magnus says with a quiet laugh.  “It’s supposed to be a good thing to love your best friend.”

“I think that only applies when you can actually be with them too,” Will replies softly, letting his eyes wander over the shadows dancing across his ceiling.  They don’t speak for a long while after that, both of them caught up in their own thoughts, until Will thinks to ask Magnus’ thoughts on Alec and Jem’s new friendship, to discern whether being jealous over this is normal too, whether or not he’s alone in it.

“They’re not together,” the junior says carefully.  “I doubt they’ve even thought of that.”

“But does it…” He hesitates before continuing slowly, “bother you?”

There’s silence, punctuated only by the quiet sounds of their rhythmic breathing, and it stretches on so long Will almost forgets what he’s just said, almost forgets he’s said anything at all, before finally Magnus replies in a whisper like he’s really just scared to admit the words out loud, “How could it not?”

And Will doesn’t need to say anything back because that’s really all there is, so he leaves it at that and they don’t talk about it, even though something in Will’s head is telling him they need to, _he_ needs to.  He ignores it and goes on through the school year without another word about it.

He’s not blind, though, and it doesn’t take long for him to notice the way Tessa is looking at him, the same way he looks at Jem.  He goes to Magnus then, after three long months of neither of them mentioning their feelings for their respective best friends, and he doesn’t really talk but somehow Magnus knows what it’s about anyway and does the talking for him.  He’s grateful for it, like he is so many things now that he knows how precious they are and how easily he can lose things.

“Tessa’s a nice girl,” Magnus says, watching Will with careful eyes.  “She’s not Jem.”

“Yeah,” is all he can bring himself to say in response because he knows that, he does, but is it so wrong to hope that maybe she could replace the silver boy in his heart if he just gave her the time? Is it so wrong to want this desperate clawing at his chest to stop for once, so wrong to want to be happy with someone for once?

“It’s going to hurt,” Magnus informs him gently.  “You know that, right?”

“You think it’s a bad idea.”

“I know it is.  Will, think about it for a minute.  How is it fair to either of you when you know you’ll never get over Jem?”  And the words hit him like a ton of bricks he can’t defend himself against even just the slightest bit because he _does_ know that.  He knows it all too well and it hurts so bad he can’t breathe sometimes.  “Please, Will. Don’t do that to yourself.”

He goes out with Tessa anyway, ignoring his friend’s advice, and he hates himself for it every second he’s with her but at least now there’s no way Jem will ever find out how he feels, will ever have the chance to reject Will because how could he ever be good enough for the most beautiful boy in the world?  And Will knows what he does to the people who love him, he knows he’s a poison just waiting to spread and destroy everything it infects, so there’s a loud part of him that screams this is good, this is right.  He can’t hurt Jem like this.

Besides, it makes Tessa beam like it’s Christmas morning every day and he does love her, even if it’s not in the way she wants, so he’s at least happy about that because she deserves it, she deserves to have everything she wants.  This is a good thing, he tells himself.  It’s the right thing.  He makes those words his mantra and never lets himself go a minute without repeating them inside his head over and over again too many times to count.

“You’re not happy,” Jem remarks casually one evening when they’re sitting on the couch watching reruns of _How I Met Your Mother_ .  He flicks the volume down without waiting for a response from Will, turning towards him to train pale, piercing eyes on his slowly reddening face.  He feels like they’re drills, digging into him and unearthing everything he wants to stay buried, but he really should have seen this coming.  Jem isn’t blind and it’d be hard for anyone not to notice how Will’s been avoiding him lately, making excuses that more often than not involve Tessa because it _still hurts_ , even after he’s been dating her for a month.  Shouldn’t he have moved on by now?

“What are you on about?” Will snarks back, feigning confusion because he doesn't want to have this conversation with Jem, doesn’t want to have it with anyone at all.

Usually, this would be where Jem lets the subject drop, not the kind of person to press an issue someone doesn’t want explored, but he doesn’t.  If anything, his eyes set harder in his pale face and his back straightens in challenge as he stares Will down until he has to resist the urge to squirm like a five year old who knows they’ve just done something wrong.  “Why have you been avoiding me?”  His voice is hard, unreadable in it’s tone, and Will would be lying if he said he wasn’t the least bit scared.

“I haven’t—” Will starts, only to be cut off.

“I can always tell when you’re lying, Will.  Even when the truth isn’t so blatantly obvious.”

He closes his open mouth, feeling like a fish out of water now, because he has absolutely no idea what to say here.  He can’t tell Jem the truth, can’t even consider it for a millisecond without feeling sick all over, but he knows he isn’t capable of lying to Jem and getting away with it.  He never has been.

“I don’t want to talk about it?” he tries, starting out the sentence as a statement but turning it into a question at the end because _what is he supposed to say here?_ What is he supposed to _do?_

Jem gives him a hard look, his jaw clenching in a way that terrifies Will just a bit because he looks almost angry, almost hurt, but those are both things that Jem has never been before and what makes now so different?  Nothing, Will tells himself.  Jem’s not angry, and he most definitely isn’t hurt.  He can’t be.

“Please, Jem. Just let it go? I promise I’ll stop avoiding you,” he adds after a beat of silent stares full of something so unreadable it makes Will feel like maybe he doesn’t really know his best friend at all.  He shakes it off quickly, though, because of course he knows Jem, he knows him better than _anyone_.

Jem looks at him for another long minute before he wordlessly turns back to the TV and presses the volume button on the remote, not taking his finger away until it reaches an almost deafening pitch.  It’s clear that he isn’t happy with this, that he’s really anything but, but Jem knows when he’s not going to get anything out of someone, knows when to let something go.

And maybe, in the end, Will should have realized that this wasn’t one of those times.  That this, above all else, would be the one thing neither of them would ever forget.


	5. Don't

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted to FF.net on October 29th, 2014. Apparently I forgot to cross post it at the time. Enjoy more of my fourteen year old self's cringe-worthy writing.

* * *

  _. Don't_

* * *

 

When Will’s older, sliding down against the wall because his legs are shaking too hard to hold him up anymore and he’s pulling his knees into his chest like they can numb the pain he’s brought on himself, he’ll think of now.  He’ll feel hot tears burn down his cheeks and won’t move to wipe them away, he’ll stare at the ceiling and laugh at himself because he could have stopped all of this, he could have fixed it before everything fell apart, and his mind will come back to this moment, among many others.  

He’ll remember curling against Jem, sobbing for the sister he would never see again, and laughing at him across the lunch table.  He’ll think of hushed words to Magnus in the dark of his living room and the hopeful look on Tessa’s face when he asked her to go with him to the diner just down the road.  He’ll look back on this moment, this instant of fighting back tears and wondering how the world could be so cruel, of all-consuming fear and immeasurable worry, and he will wonder if even then it was too late already.

He’ll wonder if he could have stopped all of this then, if only he hadn’t been so blind.

 

* * *

 

Their tenth year of high school isn’t a particularly remarkable one when it starts.  They’ve already gone through the buzz of their first year so there’s nothing to be excited about and their classes are hardly any different than before.  So, all in all, Will deems it to be a quiet year for once.

He really should have known better.

Jessamine, Jem’s foster sister, starts her first year there and brings with her a mass of trouble in the form of drama Will would much rather just avoid.  She gives Tessa’s brother moony eyes the first week or so, an action that results in Will’s girlfriend constantly being in a frenzied state of worry he can’t draw her out of no matter how hard he tries.  And then, with one careful and unreadable look cast between Jem and Will, Jessie turns her attention to glaring viciously at him and making sure he suffers as much as she can make him.

At first, he chalks it off to her being her usual dramatic self; she’d never really liked him anyway.  It’s not until she starts trying to keep him from her foster brother that he realizes there might actually be a reason here, that she might not just be doing this to watch him suffer.

He doesn’t mention it to Jem, who remains completely oblivious to Jessie’s antiques, mainly because he sees him so much less often now.  It’s odd and unusual and Will is in no way capable of getting used to the fact that his best friend might not be his best friend anymore, but he tries to brush it off and focus back on the matter at hand because maybe, just _maybe_ , Jessamine actually has a reason for doing what she is.  It’d be a first, but Will’s a firm believer in the idea that everything starts somewhere.

“Do you hate me?” he asks her when he manages to corner her by the water fountain after the rest of their friend group has already scattered off to their respective classes.  Jessie’s glare sharpens, her shoulders tense as she stares him down, but she makes no move to push him away.

“No,” she snaps harshly, but the fury behind her cold brown eyes says otherwise.

“Really?” he replies disbelievingly.  “It doesn’t seem like that.”

Her glare hardens as she forces her hands between them and moves to push them solidly against his shoulder.  Will thinks she’s about to push him away, the angry press of her hands against him telling him a story in a language he can’t read, but she doesn’t.  Instead, she curls sharp nails into his skin and snaps, “I don’t hate you. I hate what you’re doing.”

Rearing back in confusion, Will stares at her in surprise.  What he’s doing? He can’t think of anything he’s done to her that would make her so angry at him, but clearly she doesn’t feel the same.  “What do you mean?” he tries, his voice sticking in his throat like glue because somehow he has a horrible feeling about this.

Jessamine scoffs, rolling her eyes in a manner that suggests she thinks he’s the dumbest person on the planet, and sneers at him crudely before slipping past him.  “Can’t you see it?” she throws over shoulder, flipping blond ringlets back as she turns her head to shoot him one last spiteful look.

“See what?” Will demands and then there’s a moment where her eyes soften just a tiny little bit and something unreadable passes through them, but it’s gone as fast as it comes and Will’s inclined to think he’s simply imagined the whole thing.

“Stop hurting him,” she says quietly, her voice so soft he almost misses it, and then she’s gone and Will is left wondering what on earth she meant because, honestly, he has no idea.

Jem isn’t in school that day, though, so he sends him a text instead to inform him that his sister is insane and then heads off to the math class he was supposed to be in ten minutes ago.  He doesn’t think much of it, in the end, and it’s not long before he forgets about it entirely.

He doesn’t even stop to think who the ‘he’ she mentioned is.

 

* * *

 

**_9:06:_ ** _Why aren’t u in school again?_

**_9:07:_ ** _Dude, ur missing so much_

**_9:10:_ ** _How r u going to catch up?_

**_9:42:_ ** _Where are u?_

**_10:57:_ ** _Jem?_

**_11:03:_ ** _Hellooo_

**_12:14:_ ** _Answer me Jem_

**_1:49:_ ** _C'mon u haven’t talked to me in days_

**_3:19:_ ** _Can I call you?_

**_3:19:_ ** _I’m calling_

**_3:21:_ ** _Dude pick up_

**_3:45:_ ** _Are u dead?_

**_5:16:_ ** _I think Tessa’s mad at me_

**_5:54:_ ** _Oh no it’s all good she was mad at Nate_

**_5:55:_ ** _I think him and ur sister might have a thing going on_

**_7:34:_ ** _Cmon Jem I’m getting worried_

**_8:43:_ ** _U better be in school tomorrow_

**_8:44:_ ** _Uve already missed a week and a half_

**_9:37:_ ** _Seriously, what’s going on?_

**_11:52:_ ** _U know what I give up_

**_11:53:_ ** _See u in school if u ever bother to come_

**_2:48:_ ** _Hey, Jem?_

**_2:48:_ ** _We’re okay, right?_

 

* * *

 

The Branwell residence could easily be considered a mansion with it’s victorian style spires rising high into the air above the third floor of the manor and wide paned glass windows stretching for seemingly endless meters to form the front.  Will hasn’t been here much in the time he’s known them, nowhere near as often as Jem’s been over to his house, so it takes him a minute to locate the cobblestone path winding across the perfectly manicured lawn to the intricately carved double doors and perfectly kept wooden porch.

Admittedly, he’s more nervous than he should be.  After all, this is Jem.  He’s Will’s best friend; he’s not going to mind that he’s shown up unannounced.  God knows he’s done it himself to Will on more than one occasion.

Still, he can’t shake the feeling that maybe he isn’t welcome here, that maybe Jem really doesn’t want to see him, that he’s been ignoring his texts and phone calls for the past month for a reason.  But he can’t just accept that his best friend has suddenly dropped off the map entirely without a word so he steps forward and presses a clammy finger against the doorbell, rocking back on his heels as it rings through the house.

There’s the sounds of footsteps thudding down hardwood stairs before the door flies open to reveal a head of perfectly curled blond hair.  Jessamine scowls when she sees him, her brown eyes darkening to a near black.

“What are you doing here?” she spits, giving him a look that would send lesser men running for the hills.

Will, never one to be outmatched, gives her a look of equal hateful force. “I’m here to see Jem. Why else would I come?”

Her scowl seems to darken even more at that before she flips bouncy locks of blond hair over her shoulder and moves to better guard the entrance.  “Well he doesn’t want to see you,” she snaps, her lips tilting into a condescending smirk.

He tries to ignore the pang of hurt her words send through him, telling himself that she’s lying to him to protect her brother from some perceived threat he seems to pose.  He tells himself she means to hurt him, that it’s not Jem who doesn’t want to see him but Jessamine who doesn’t want him to see her brother.  He tells himself it’s not true, but there’s  a part of him that still believes it.

“If that’s true,” he says carefully, stepping forward to shove his way past her, “James can tell me himself.”  Maybe it’s the use of his best friend’s full name that finally has Jessie relenting, moving aside to slam the door shut behind him and watch with an unreadable expression as he heads up the stairs, but Will’s long since given up on trying to understand the brown-eyed shedevil.

He’s at the top of the stairs already when she calls out again, her voice loud in the echoing silence of the gargantuan house. “Will!” she yells, drawing his attention reluctantly back to her. “If you hurt him, I’ll kill you.”

Will doesn’t stop to ponder her words, offering only a semi-acknowledging nod as he steps down the hallway to Jem’s closed door.  It’s another oddity to see the dark wood barring his passage; Jem almost always keeps his door open when he’s the only one inside.  Still, he tries not to be too thrown off by it and raises his hand to knock as he had on the front door.

“Jem? It’s me, I’m coming in so you better not be changing or anything.”  Not waiting for an answer, or maybe just knowing somewhere in his gut that there isn’t going to be one, Will twists the knob and creaks the door open, moving inside as he lets it fall shut behind him.  It’s not until he turns around, flicking the light switch on to illuminate the room, that he realizes something is different here.

Maybe it’s the huge beeping machine beside the bed, or the IV bag hooked up to the still figure of his best friend lying prone at the center of it all that clues him in.  Then again, it could just be the new rug on the floor.

“Jem?” he croaks, his voice sticking painfully to the constricting sides of his throat. The boy on the bed doesn’t move, the eerie beeping filling the room doesn’t change rhythm, and Will suddenly feels like he’s just stepped into a nightmare without even realizing it until the truly terrifying part started playing out in front of him.

Taking a hesitant step closer to the bed, Will eyes his friend and the machines around him warily.  He notes the dark bag under Jem’s eyes, the horrible hollowness to his cheeks that seems to indicate Will could probably count every bone in Jem’s body if he weren’t hidden under the covers, the unnatural pallor to his cheeks, the way his silver hair sticks to his burning forehead, and it makes him swallow thickly, his heart dropping.  No wonder Jem hasn’t been in school.

There’s a chair poised expectantly by the side of the bed, next to the slowly emptying IV bag, and Will sinks into it bonelessly, his legs shaking too hard now to hold him up.  For a long while he doesn’t do anything but stare at the best friend he hadn’t even noticed was so unwell, so sick, before it was too late.  Because it’s hard, it is, seeing the one person who’s always been there for him so beaten down, teetering on the edge of a fate Will can’t even bring himself to think about.

He can feel the tears burning at the backs of his eyes, spilling down his cheeks like liquid fire scorching his mistakes into his skin for all to see.  He’d been avoiding Jem before, distancing himself, and now suddenly it feels like he’s shot a hole through his own chest for his actions because maybe, just maybe, if he hadn’t been so selfish and ignorant and childish he would’ve noticed something was up sooner. Or maybe Jem would have told him, would have trusted him enough to let him see this part of him.

Maybe that’s what hurts him the most though, the thought that he’d distanced himself from Jem to the point where the other boy had felt like he couldn’t tell him about this, this huge important thing that’s been weighing him down for so long now.  And it has been so long, when Will thinks back on it, probably from even before they met or perhaps just after.  Because he can see them now, the little hints he’d missed this whole time in his ignorance, like the way Jem always seemed to get out of breath too fast or how he sometimes wouldn’t eat, claiming he wasn’t hungry.  He can see it in the way the silver boy would grasp at railings just a little too desperately sometimes, or the way he would often be too tired to smile with his eyes. He can see it in the growing thinness, the growing paleness, the growing distance from the world around him. _As though he was preparing to leave it_.

His best friend’s hand is cold between his own when he reaches for it, a harsh awakening to the icy truth pulling him away from the warm comfort of his ignorance.  He closes his eyes for a pained minute, blinking away the tears distorting his vision as he opens them again, sucking in a sharp breath to stop the sobs he can feel coming on.  He doesn’t want Jem to wake up and see him crying.

As if on cue, the heart monitor towering over the fragile figure on the bed picks up it’s slowing pace, the beats of a return to consciousness filling the stark shadows of Jem’s room as silver lashes flutter against paper white skin. For a moment Will’s too afraid to move, watching as his friend’s eyes trail lazily across the ceiling in a haze of bleary waking. And then the hand he’s clutching flexes in his grip, as though testing to see if there’s really something holding it and Jem presses his eyes shut hard, sucking in a sharp breath.

“Will?” he tries warily, still not opening his eyes.

Will leans forward to breath warm air over their joined hands, as though trying to further prove his presence. “Yeah,” he replies, his voice soft and careful and even he can hear the pitiful hurt and uncertainty resounding so very deeply within it.  “It’s me.”

“What are you—” Jem’s words catch in his throat and he swallows roughly before trying again.  “What are you doing here?”

“I was worried, Jem. I hadn’t heard from you in over a month.”

“You shouldn’t have come.”

“Why? So you could continue to hide this from me?”

“Will—”

“Don’t, Jem.  Just, please.” Will closes his eyes, lifting one hand away from Jem’s to rub at his temple. “Don’t,” he repeats.

Silence falls between them for a long while, stretching thickly through the bitter air around them and latching cruelly onto the hurt resounding in their hearts.  Will hates the silence, loathes it with every bit of his breaking being, but for as much as he wants so desperately to break it he can’t find any words that won’t just make this thing between them worse.  It hurts too, knowing that he has no idea what to say to his best friend to make things better, because Jem has always been the one person he never had to watch his words with, apart from the ones echoing in the heart that shouldn’t beat so hard for someone he can never have. Will would be lying if he said this wasn’t nearly as painful as losing his sister, Ella.

Finally, Jem is the one to break the silence, his voice soft and exhausted as he seems to all but sink into the bed.  “I’m sorry,” he starts quietly. “I should have told you.”

“Yeah,” Will agrees, not looking at the weak figure of his best friend.  “But I’m sorry too. I should have noticed. I should have payed more attention. I shouldn’t have pushed you away, Jem. I was being so stupid, only thinking about my feelings. God, I was so _convinced_ that I was doing the right thing, that it was better that way. I didn’t even stop for a second to think about the consequences. I didn’t even consider how horrible it would be or how much it would hurt us both. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I— This isn’t your fault, Jem. It’s mine. Why would you even apologize? I can’t...” Will trails off, blinking away the sudden rush of tears. “You couldn’t have told me because I was pushing you away. It’s not your fault. It’s not—” He’s sobbing by now, hunching over and pressing the hand that isn’t clutching tightly to Jem’s against his burning eyes in an attempt to make the tears stop. Because maybe if the crying stops, the pain will too. “It’s all my fault.”

Jem doesn’t say anything at first, always so irritatingly good at listening, at absorbing the information as it comes to him, but Will can feel his concerned gaze like an anchor on his heart, keeping him from sinking too deep into his own misery. “Will,” he says softly after another long moment of silence in which Will can’t even bring himself to lift his head and meet his best friend’s eyes.  Jem’s hand is gentle as it squeezes his own in a gesture of comfort, his other equally kind as it descends into his hair, long fingers combing through it.  He tries not to let it hurt too much, tries to make his heart stop clenching so painfully, but it doesn’t take long for him to give up and sink easily into Jem’s touch, drawing what comfort he can from this.

“How bad is it?” he asks later, curled up on the bed beside the sickly boy, the new _X-Men_ movie playing out on the screen of the laptop settled over their legs.  Neither of them seem to really be paying attention, Will lost in thoughts he’d rather not have and Jem settled with his head on Will’s shoulder, eyes closed to the tiring world around them.

He doesn’t lift his head or open his eyes, doesn’t even move an inch, but Jem’s response is still loud in the quiet of the room, drowning out any sounds coming from the laptop. “Bad,” is all he says, letting out a harsh breath that warms the side of Will’s neck.

“Will you get better?”

A pause, pungent and heavy in the stillness surrounding them. “Sometimes.”

“Sometimes?” Will demands, the word like a weight in his throat holding up his aching heart.

“There will be good days, weeks, maybe even months. And there will be bad ones, too.”

“Like right now?” His voice sounds accusing even to his own ears, despite his efforts to turn it into something soft, something kind and warm and comforting. He’s never been good at that; it’s really always been Jem’s area of expertise.

“Yeah,” his friend replies quietly. “This is— This is the worst I’ve had.”

“But it won’t be for long, will it?”

“No. It won’t.” Another pause, heady and pained as Will’s hand clenches against Jem’s shoulder where he’s wrapped it around the other boy. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“I should have told you,” Jem whispers, clenching his eyes shut even tighter.  “I know you say I couldn’t have because you’d been pushing me away, but we both know that’s not true. I’ve had _years,_ Will.  And you think that in all that time there was never a single chance to tell you?”

The words push down Will’s throat, sticking to the sides and keeping his own from finding their way out.  It _hurts_ and maybe Will had really just wanted to blame himself for this because then, if Jem had blamed him too, he could have taken the punishment, the consequence, and used it to repent for the horrible sin of falling so deeply in love with his best friend.  Maybe that’s what this is really about for him, not the fact that he didn’t know.

So instead of arguing with Jem, of disagreeing and continuing to push for Jem to just be mad at him already, he opens his mouth and tells little white lies that sink cruelly into the black shadow suffocating his heart, adding to it’s weight.  “Yeah,” he says.  “You should have. Why didn’t you?  I mean, _years_ , Jem, really?  How could you keep this from me? What, did you think I’d stop being your friend just because of this or something? It’s good to know you think so highly of me.”

“You’re angry,” Jem notes carefully and Will would laugh if he didn’t think it’d ruin his current image because yes, he is angry. He’s so angry he can barely think straight, but it’s not at Jem for not telling him. No, the only person Will’s pissed at right now is himself.

“You think?” he spits anyway, inflicting every ounce of shittiness he can muster into the words because maybe Jem will be hurt. Maybe he’ll hate him or at least realize how horrible of a person he is and he’ll kick him out. And maybe if Jem kicks him out, if they stop being the friends they are, Will will stop loving him the way he does and everything will be okay again.

Jem sighs heavily and sinks down into the pillows he’s propped up against, sliding away from Will.  There’s a sharp stab at his heart that it causes, Jem moving away from him, but he tells himself that this is what he wanted. He has no right to be hurt. “I did say I was sorry.”

Folding his arms over his chest, Will stares blankly at the screen of the laptop, his eyes not even registering the picture playing out on it.  “Yeah,” he replies weakly. “You did.  That’s not enough.”

“What else is there to say, Will?”

He hesitates, gnawing on his lower lip for a long while before he simply gives up and sinks down into the pillows just as Jem had previously.  “I don’t know.”

Neither of them speak after that, the wordless language between them wrapping around the room and smothering them both in a truth they would much rather not face.  The funny thing is, Will isn’t even sure what this truth is but it’s drowning and suffocating and oh God, how he wishes he could just _breathe_.

It’s only when the noise of the movie finally comes to a halt that Will realizes it’s pouring outside, rain tumbling down the windows in angry sheets. He can hear thunder too, lightning cracking across the sky in silver whips that light up the room.  Cursing his luck, he shoves himself up off the bed and tugs on the boots he’d previously discarded when he’d moved onto the bed, heading for the closed door and out into the hall.

“You don’t have to go,” comes Jem voice from behind him and when he turns around to look at him he scowls at the raised eyebrow and pointed look out the window.

“It’s just going to get worse,” he says, groaning at the fact that he still isn’t old enough to have a license and therefore is going to have to walk all the way back to his house.  He should have at least brought his bike.

Jem’s response is soft, a mumble that barely reaches Will’s ears.  “Yeah, it is.”

Will gets the feeling they’re not talking about the storm anymore, if Jem’s steady but sad gaze is anything to go by.  “Staying isn’t going to help,” he mutters back, not meeting his friend’s piercing grey eyes.

“Leaving is only going to make it worse.”

Sighing, Will drops the boot he’d been just about to pull on. “Is it?”

“We both know it, Will. If you leave now it’ll never be the same.”  It feels like an ultimatum, like Jem is telling him if he leaves like this, with them on such unsteady ground, they’ll never be able to be anything close to friends again.  It’s hard, thinking about it like that, especially when Jem has never been one to deal in such harsh terms.

He rubs a hand over his eyes, turns away, paces across the room and back. “What do you want me to say, Jem?” he demands, his voice rising into something close to a yell.  “What do you want me to _do_?”

“Anything, Will.  Just don’t leave.” He’s lost now, barely keeping track of the words leaving their mouths, but he plows ahead anyway even though everything in him screams he’s not making sense.

“What happens if I stay?”

Jem hesitates.  “I don’t know.”

He stares at him for a long moment that stretches around them in a vibrant shadow of uncertainty, considering what to do.  Whatever it is he chooses, he knows that this will be where things change between them.

“Okay,” he whispers and climbs back onto the bed.  Because no matter what happens from here on out, the thought of losing Jem right now, just like this, is far too hard to bear.

But oh God, he should have known this wouldn’t be the worst of it.

**Author's Note:**

> Leave comments or kudos to let me know what you think!


End file.
